Fort Bragg foster father accused of killing 5 month old takes the stand

A Fort Bragg foster father accused of beating to death a 5-month-old baby girl took the witness stand in his own defense Wednesday in Mendocino County Superior Court.

Wilson L. "Josh" Tubbs III, 39, faces a charge of child abuse resulting in the death of baby Emerald Herriet, who had been in his care for a month when he brought her to the Mendocino Coast District Hospital not breathing and bruised all over her head and face Dec. 2.

Tubbs' defense attorney, Public Defender Linda Thompson, reminded him on the stand that investigators who were investigating the case had described baby Emerald's injuries by telling him it looked like they had been caused by a car accident.

"Did you inflict those injuries?" she asked.

"No, I did not," Tubbs replied.

Prosecutor Paul Sequeira had on Tuesday shown the jury a recorded interview between Fort Bragg investigators and Tubbs, during which Tubbs described how the baby fell from a 21-inch high changing bench the night before he took her to the hospital to explain how she was injured.

Later in the interview, after investigators tell him the fall doesn't account for two skull fractures, bruising all over her head and face and severe subdural hematoma (blood accumulated between the skull and brain), Tubbs tells them he slapped the side of the baby's head with an open palm and shook her so that her head twice whipped back and forth.

Thompson asked Tubbs on the witness stand Wednesday if he had done those things to baby Emerald, and, when he said he hadn't, asked him why he had told the investigators that he did.

"I knew they were looking for a specific thing, and if they didn't get it from me that they were going to get it from somebody else, so I told them what they wanted," Tubbs said.

Tubbs spent much of the court day Thursday on the witness stand under Thompson's direct questioning, describing how he stayed home with his premature daughter, now 18, when she was born, how he cared for his elderly parents when they could no longer care for themselves, the events that led up to Emerald being placed in his and his wife's home and the events that led to the baby's Dec. 4 death.

Tubbs said he had left baby Emerald briefly on the bench to move some items from the table where he usually changed her and "got one step into the den" when he heard the baby's "serious cry," meaning she was hurt.

He didn't see it, he said, but believed his approximately 60-pound dog, Leroy, had run through the room where he had left her on the bench briefly and knocked her off.

The dog, Tubbs said, is "kind of like a bull in a China shop," and said he had previously knocked down his daughter, his wife and almost himself.

Asked by Thompson why a Fort Bragg Police Officer who later visited the home to investigate didn't see the dog walk by that bench to get to his food, Tubbs said, "I talked to him really stern, and he won't go near that bench ever again."

The night of the fall, Tubbs came back into the room to find the foam changing pad on top of the baby on the floor. The fall bloodied the baby's nose, he said, as she had landed face-down with her arms at her sides and slightly under her body.

Thompson also asked Tubbs where the baby's swing had been in relation to the bench that day, and Tubbs said it had been in an unusually close position to where the baby landed because he'd been sweeping.

Tubbs said he had cleaned baby Emerald up and decided not to take her to the hospital.

"She didn't seem like she was seriously injured," Tubbs said.

He told the jury that he had watched her bruises appear and darken until throughout the night until they were purple the next day.

Previously, doctors and other medical professionals who examined baby Emerald at Mendocino Coast District Hospital and at Oakland Children's Hospital, where she was flown, testified that a fall from the 21-inch high replica of the bench Sequeira showed them could not have caused the severe injuries Emerald had.

A child abuse pediatrician at Oakland Children's Hospital said there had been at least 49 bruises on the baby's head and face, two skull fractures, severe brain bleeding and retinal hemorrhages -- all consistent with violent shaking.

Tubbs' wife, Marte Tubbs, had finished her testimony earlier Tuesday. She told the court that Emerald's eyes had strayed and "floated." That and the fact that the baby began holding her fists to her eyes and crying when they were removed soon after coming to live with the family, coupled with baby Emerald's relatively slow development, gave her cause to be concerned that the baby had a neurological disorder.

Early Start experts had recommended the Tubbs take baby Emerald to University of California, San Francisco, but Mendocino County Child Protective Services social worker supervisor Chuck Dunbar had told her to go back to the baby's pediatrician instead, Marte Tubbs testified.

Wilson "Josh" Tubbs resumes his testimony today.

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.